Nine Things You Might Not Know About The Super Nintendo's Graphics

It's hard not to get wrapped up in nostalgia whenever you look at a SNES game -- and while there are a number of reasons for this, one of the major reasons has to be the visuals. As it turns out, there is actually a lot that is unique about the graphics on the Super Nintendo.

The ever-knowledgeable DYKGaming tells us all about the fascinating graphical capabilities of the SNES, including:

Special features like the SFX chip and Mode 7

What games make use of the SNES' special graphical capabilities

The many graphic "modes" the console includes

What made mode seven so special amongst these modes

How the system renders its graphics

How the system dealed with sprites and scaling

how Starfox used a special chip inside its cartridge in order to render its unique graphics

What other games went on to use special chips for their graphics -- like Super Mario RPG

And most of all, how the system kept afloat as a 16-bit console in the 32-bit age

Virtua Racing had an additional specialised chop built into the cartridge to do the 3D. Which is why it cost twice as much as a normal cartridge.
Games like Gunstar Heroes was able to do some of the scaling and rotation that Mode 7 did, but through software rather then dedicated hardware.